Interview Chris Avellone tells all on My Favourite Game

[Infinitron]

Tags: Chris Avellone; Wasteland

Chris Avellone was a guest on a podcast called "My Favourite Game" earlier this week, ostensibly for the purpose of talking about his favorite RPG, the original Wasteland. In practice, though, the podcast was about a lot more than that. It seems that Chris is now more comfortable with talking about the circumstances behind his departure from Obsidian. In short, he felt pigeonholed there - both by the demands and preconceptions of the other co-owners and by Obsidian's lack of access to certain IPs. Chris reveals that he is currently working not only on Torment and Divinity: Original Sin 2, but also on a host of other games that he can't talk about yet, including AAA games.

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There's a lot more in this hour and a half podcast. If you can't be bothered to listen to it yourself, Codex MCA Watcher Fairfax has provided a summary here. Earlier this month, Chris was also a guest on a German podcast called Retrokompott. I haven't listened to all of it, but apparently it's about many of the same things. It's worth noting that in both podcasts, Chris is very effusive about his love for System Shock 2 and Ultima Underworld (which are his second and third favorite games). I wonder if he doesn't end up being involved with System Shock 3 in some capacity...

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Someone let me know when he either starts dishing out the dirt or announces an exciting project.

I can't keep coming to these threads. It's too painful to be so consistently dissapointed.

 

[Fenix]

It's worth noting that in both podcasts, Chris is very effusive about his love for System Shock 2

That sweet feeling when your tastes match...

 

[DarkUnderlord]

When is the Chris Avellone RPG Kick Starter?

 

[Delterius]

All kickstarters may include Chris Avellone on a roll of 15 or higher.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

This was a good interview. Very interesting about his leaving Obsidian and how unhappy he was.
Seems he got stuck into something and couldn't get out.
Maybe he felt like he wasn't getting the respect he deserved or was pissed that he couldn't get the opportunities he wanted.
Considering he was a founder of Obsidian, that anger seems justified.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

It's a well known phenomenon in the business/tech world that people who are good at some kind of work often get promoted, even if the work they are good at has nothing to do with management. So you end up having a manager who is unfit for the job, and lose a talented worker for the job they are actually good at. Probably what happened with Avellone, he had to spend most of his time overseeing other people doing the work he used to do, at worse quality, instead of being locked up in Fergus' basement writing Planescape 2. Hopefully he can just focus on writing now, although I don't like this stretching across multiple projects. Stick to one thing, and give it your all, and you might just get something special.

Also, kinda ironic Avellone's favorites being all about the gameplay.

 

[Prime Junta]

It's a well known phenomenon in the business/tech world that people who are good at some kind of work often get promoted, even if the work they are good at has nothing to do with management. So you end up having a manager who is unfit for the job, and lose a talented worker for the job they are actually good at. Probably what happened with Avellone, he had to spend most of his time overseeing other people doing the work he used to do, at worse quality, instead of being locked up in Fergus' basement writing Planescape 2. Hopefully he can just focus on writing now, although I don't like this stretching across multiple projects. Stick to one thing, and give it your all, and you might just get something special.

Looks like the Obsidz management aren't the only people who only want him to write.

 

[Gregz]

Q: Chris Avellone, what is your favorite game?

A: My favorite game is Wasteland.

 

[Goral]

If you can't be bothered to listen to it yourself, Codex MCA Watcher Fairfax has provided a summary here and here.

This is the most important part of the news IMO, I'm glad you've included it.Thank you Fairfax.

 

[Infinitron]

Looks like the Obsidz management aren't the only people who only want him to write.

Haha yep. The corollary that dare not speak its name: Chris also quit to avoid having to do what a lot of Codexers might have wanted him to do - work on writing walls of text for late 90s RPGs for the rest of his career.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

But he didn't really write at Obsidian lately, he just did bits of writing here and there while being the Creative Director. That's really not the same as him being the lead/main writer as he was on PS:T. And listen, I wish him the best of luck if he wants to explore other aspects of games, but we know for certain that he has a lot of talent writing. Has he ever done anything to suggest he has talent for designing gameplay? PS:T, KotOR2? Yeah....

 

[Delterius]

Yes, but as a writer the world isn't limited to late nineties walls of text. Storytelling in games is much more than that. MCA himself, going by his presentations, is much more likely to gush about environmental storytelling and emergent gameplay than his old work.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Well, emergent gameplay is the result of various in-game systems coming together. I am not saying Avellone can't design systems, but he just never has in a large scale game as far as I know. PS:T used IE systems from Bioware, KotOR2 used KotOR systems from Bioware, Fallout 2 used Fallout systems from the Troika guys, and so on. So he is basically a completely unkown quantity when it comes to that.

 

[Infinitron]

I can understand the confusion - Chris is sort of a contradictory figure. In the past, he's bashed consoles, bashed full voice acting, and talked about how producing multiple oldschool isometric RPGs would be a glorious return to the days of Black Isle. Directly after he left Obsidian, he spoke of a bright future full of writing awesome characters. One can't help but feel that he's tried to craft his persona in accordance with the tastes of his grognardy fanbase over the years, creating a conflict with what he actually wants - a conflict that he himself may not have been entirely conscious of (until now?).

Heck, he even talks about the downsides of voice acted player characters in this interview. I guess what bothers him about it is not that voice acting means you can't write tons of text, but that it makes editing harder, interferes with the player's identification with his character, etc.

 

[Cosmo]

Looks like the Obsidz management aren't the only people who only want him to write.

Haha yep. The corollary that dare not speak its name: Chris also quit to avoid having to do what a lot of Codexers might have wanted him to do - work on writing walls of text for late 90s RPGs for the rest of his career.

I repeatedly said he was burnt out on that kind of thing : how many years have passed since he began talking about Torment's "vomit of text" ?

 

[Prime Junta]

I can understand the confusion - Chris is sort of a contradictory figure. In the past, he's bashed consoles, bashed full voice acting, and talked about how producing multiple oldschool isometric RPGs would be a glorious return to the days of Black Isle. Directly after he left Obsidian, he spoke of a bright future full of writing awesome characters. One can't help but feel that he's tried to craft his persona in accordance with the tastes of his grognardy fanbase over the years, creating a conflict with what he actually wants - a conflict that he himself may not have been entirely conscious of (until now?).

Heck, he even talks about the downsides of voice acted player characters in this interview. I guess what bothers him about it is not that voice acting means you can't write tons of text, but that it makes editing harder, interferes with the player's identification with his character, etc.

Sounds like a midlife crisis. He needs to buy a V8 and get a mistress, stat.

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

MCA sounds fat for me

 

[Neanderthal]

Judgin MCA by what hes done i'd like to see what he can do as lead designer again cos he always works to try an make everythin in his games work together, you see this in Torment ages ago right through to New Vegas dlcs. He always seems to wanna make settin, gameplay an mechanic support an reinforce each other, which always appeals to me. Love to see him do a survival horror thing, cos hes clearly got a boner for that an maybe even a Noir settin because his aesthetic seems to match that slightly surreal, larger than life an off kilter genre. He also works to make shit cool an distinctive, in midst o a sea o dullness an same recycled shit thats fuckin welcome.

 

[DeepOcean]

Avellone is a writer, writing walls of text is sorta what writers do. Maybe the problem isn't writing walls of text, unless Chris hates being a writer, I think this playing with alot of projects speak more of his age, when you are 40 to 50 , 3 years stuck on a single project becomes too much. It is a pity for us he wasted more than a decade of productive life on Obsidian.

 

[Crooked Bee]

I agree with Neanderthal that the New Vegas DLC, and especially Dead Money, is a good example of how Avellone is more than "just" a writer of text. He really attempted to tie gameplay and narrative together in that one and it was a very interesting attempt, despite the severe limitations of the engine. If that's what he has in mind for his future project(s), then that makes perfect sense to me and I'd love to see what he can do without the aforementioned limitations.

Still, that would only be possible if MCA was the project lead, could choose the engine, etc. Can't do that in a minor role on other people's project.

 

[Infinitron]

I agree with Neanderthal that the New Vegas DLC, and especially Dead Money, is a good example of how Avellone is more than "just" a writer of text. He really attempted to tie gameplay and narrative together in that one and it was a very interesting attempt, despite the severe limitations of the engine. If that's what he has in mind for his future project(s), then that makes perfect sense to me and I'd love to see what he can do without the aforementioned limitations.

Still, that would only be possible if MCA was the project lead, could choose the engine, etc. Can't do that in a minor role on other people's project.

I consider the (non-HH) New Vegas DLCs to be the first example of what I've taken to calling "Neo-Avellonism", which is basically a combination of the familiar narrative tropes of "classic Avellonism" with a holistic setting/environment/level design probably inspired by Bioshock. Dead Money is of course the most blatantly Bioshock-like of the three.

(why yes I'm in kind of a pretentious mood recently)

 

[Lurker King]

Well, emergent gameplay is the result of various in-game systems coming together. I am not saying Avellone can't design systems, but he just never has in a large scale game as far as I know. PS:T used IE systems from Bioware, KotOR2 used KotOR systems from Bioware, Fallout 2 used Fallout systems from the Troika guys, and so on. So he is basically a completely unkown quantity when it comes to that.

How about Alpha Protocol?

Spoiler

 

[Major_Blackhart]

I wonder how long this will go on for.
Will Obsidian ask him back in whatever capacity he wants? Or is the severing permanent you think?

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

I wonder how long this will go on for.
Will Obsidian ask him back in whatever capacity he wants? Or is the severing permanent you think?

Well, you saw how Fergus was upset at the Troika guys for leaving Black Isle, but now 2/3rds of them are back with him, so nothing is permanent. I am sure they will all be back together in their 50s/60s, working on the next great Virtual Reality monetization engine mobile RPG.